Dreamonkey: 2023 results and 2024 company goals
How we got through the past year and where we are headed
By Niccolò Maria Menozzi
2023 for Dreamonkey has been a year of change and investment. In this article we will go over the milestones of the year that has just passed and the prospects for 2024.
Last year (2022) was a period of consolidation and expansion (you can read our review of 2022 results and 2023 company goals). Turnover grew by 20% giving evidence, along with 70% in 2021, of clear signs of growth. While the pace of growth has changed, it is a conscious choice. Dreamonkey has given itself time for thoughtful mid-to-long-term reflections and maneuvers, but it has not stopped. So here is our fourth company report outlining this year’s highlights and goals for the future.
New clients in Italy and abroad
In 2023 we acquired 5 new customers, as in 2022. For the second year in a row, no new overseas customers were acquired, but we worked to lay the foundation for future business opportunities. With our established overseas customers, activities continue and new projects have started.
2023 commercial activities aimed at customers interested in web development services were scaled back in favor of resource allocation on Koioty.
Koioty
The real business highlight of 2023 is our Koioty software, dedicated to Industrial IoT. The alpha version was completed in July, after intensive design, development and optimization work carried out for several months. We had already talked about this project in 2022, but this year the platform enhancement activities have increased considerably and, in parallel, time has also been devoted to building a commercial network that will bear fruit in the coming months. There is also a dedicated website that will be released in early 2024.
In fact Koioty has been a true startup project that, for much of 2023, has committed time and resources on various fronts. With challenges and satisfactions. As you will read later in this article, it has been a significant investment that has impacted the economies of 2023 and one that we will continue to support as we look to the medium and long term for growth. If we stopped dreaming and looking ahead, limiting ourselves to just the here and now, we would no longer be Dreamonkey.
Quasar sponsorship and open source
We have been attending the Quasar open source framework environment for four years now, and 2023 also brought some long-awaited news. After various misadventures that punctuated all of 2022, a preview of the new Quasar website, which we helped to improve together with the rest of the core team, was finally published online at the end of December (if you want to learn more about it, you can read our article). After a period of revision supported by community feedback, the website was made official in March. If you are interested in learning more about the process followed to optimize the website, you can read about it in this article.
We have done a lot of work on the automated testing area. We have added automated testing to more than three of the most widely used Quasar components and for when developers create new projects based on this framework. Similar work has been done for the Vue and Vite testing suite, making it easier to find new versions problems in advance. Also on the Quasar side, we improved the TypeScript support, we automated the generation of release notes on GitHub, and engaged as much as possible in PR Reviews.
Finally, although unrelated to Quasar, we released a tool that automates the reuse of TypeScript between server and client, using GraphQL and VueApollo.
Partnership Vue.js and VueDay 2023
After we became one of the official Vue.js Partners in 2022, this year as a sponsor we supported the VueDay organized by GrUSP. The event dedicated to the open source framework, held in November in Verona, Italy, gave us the opportunity to take our first steps on a bigger stage.
Our CTO Paolo Caleffi gave a talk during the conference, bringing Quasar’s qualities to the attention of the audience. We hope this will be the first in a series of interesting events between now and the future.
However, after one year of partnership and despite our commitment to the Verona conference, at least for the time being, we have decided to suspend our Vue Partnership. Although at the beginning of this journey we desired to strengthen our presence in the Vue environment, these months have led us to take a different approach. As in the case of other open source projects, we decided to contribute to the growth of the ecosystem, but on the technical side. Therefore, during 2024 we will be working directly on the Vue and Vite code to improve these technologies for the benefit of the entire community.
Training, trips and other news
There is no shortage of the usual corporate “marginalia” which we report in a few words but which, as always, punctuated our year.
First we report that, unable to sit still for a moment, in late October, Paolo Caleffi joined the board of directors of Unindustria’s Digital Club of Reggio Emilia, under the chairmanship of Flavio Codeluppi of Netribe Srl.
Employees and shareholders who wished to pursue this personal improvement, continue weekly English classes to improve their speaking proficiency.
Corporate vacations are coming to their third edition. After Copenhagen and Trentino, 2023 was the year of Budapest. Who knows where we will go to the next edition.
Finally, this year as every year, in line with our corporate values of continuous improvement, we welcomed a young intern into the office in collaboration with high schools in Reggio Emilia.
Turnover
Dreamonkey’s revenue remained stable compared to the previous year. Dreamonkey Srl closed positively for the fourth year in a row, proving to be a 100% economically sound company.
The reasons for this momentary suspension of growth are deliberate and calculated. The effort on Koioty has committed resources for the equivalent of several months of work, with a significant impact on turnover. The investment will certainly bring results in 2024, but for now, this startup phase has been a major cost.
2023 goals and the 2024 ones
Last year we set 6 main goals (you can read them at the bottom of this report). Some of these goals were achieved, others were not, or not completely. Two examples are the increase in turnover and personnel, two factors that had a mutual influence on the overall results for the year. The reasons behind the scaling back of turnover targets have already been stated.
On the personnel side, however, we faced difficulties. The intake of two new junior developers, at the turn of December 2022 and early 2023, did not go well. We dismissed the candidates because they were not up to the requirements, despite what seemed to be good premises during interviews. An unforeseen situation, in a way, considering the positive trend of hiring in previous years, characterized by reliable people inclined to improvement. This led us to rethink and strengthen our selection criteria for the future. Despite the difficulties, although no permanent hires were made, we entered into a collaboration with a young developer who had done a school internship with us in 2021 and who, from the beginning, seemed promising.
After all, setbacks are part of the game. Undeterred, we proceed as resolute and imaginative as ever. Nonetheless, acquiring new customers and making Koioty operational remain two achievements. In contrast, the amount of content on our blog, although not increased, remains stable on average, and we have diversified our articles by adding more technical topics related to web development.
On the process automation side, we have integrated a company web portal. It manages different tasks: counting the vacation days and the leaves from work of the team; collecting and automating the reports compilation of work hours dedicated to our clients. These tools will be joined by others, including a CRM and a quotation generator, which will be operational soon, in early 2024.
Contributions to Quasar, as described in the previous sections, have not been lacking. Therefore, this goal can be considered achieved. Perhaps partially. This might be the case because, although significant, the other efforts in open source have not specifically touched the IoT domain as planned in late 2022.
For 2024 we will conduct activities targeting these goals.
- Increase company turnover;
- strengthen our sales network with the support of new dedicated resources, especially targeting the sale of Koioty;
- hire new technical staff;
- integrate new technical expertise in the IIoT field, to consolidate the industry expertise already acquired;
- exceed the number of technical articles written in 2023 for our blog;
- strengthen our presence in Unindustria by participating in more initiatives and projects;
As always, if you want to work with us contact us and let’s talk about it.